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Archive for April, 2015

London VMUG presentation: Hands on with vSphere 6.0

April 23rd, 2015 No comments

vmug-logoI had the great pleasure today of presenting at the London VMware User Group. I did a presentation called “Hands on with vSphere 6.0” where I briefly covered what’s new and then went into some of the architectural changes with the new vCenter and Platform Services Controller (PSC) and Enhanced Linked Mode.

I warned about the vast amount of incorrect information currently on the interwebs as the architecture and recommended layout changed from the Beta to the released product so make sure what you are reading is up to date. This particularly relates to VMware not recommending you run an embedded PSC if you need to link even two vCenters together but rather have an external one which requires a load balancer for true continuous availability.

I went through some of the install and upgrade steps which may mean you need to split out your vSphere 5.x SSO to an external one before upgrading to the vSphere 6 PSC. I then covered some new things related to security and how certificates are now handled with the new VMware Certificate Authority in the PSC.

Here’s a copy of the presentation.:

HP Service Pack for ProLiant 2015.04.0 released, includes vSphere 6.0 support

April 17th, 2015 No comments

HP server users may be glad to know that HP has released the latest update to its Service Pack for Proliant which will be supported until April 30, 2016.

vSphere 6.0 support has been added so super-keen upgraders now have HP driver and firmware to match.

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?sp4ts.oid=4091567&swItemId=MTX_8f34f27973a04a71b211d728ab#tab1

This latest SPP has added support for:

  • New HP ProLiant servers:
    • HP ML10 v2
    • HP XL730f Gen9
    • HP XL740f Gen9
    • HP XL750f Gen9
    • HP ML110 Gen9
    • HP XL170r Gen9
    • HP XL190r Gen9
    • HP WS460c Gen9 Graphics Server Blade
  • New HP ProLiant options
  • Red Had Enterprise Linux 6.6, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, VMware vSphere 5.5 U2 and VMware vSphere 6.0
  • HP USB Key Utility for Windows v2.0.0.0 for downloads greater than 4GB
  • Select Linux firmware components available in rpm format
  • HP Smart Update Manager v7.2.0.

Release Notes are here:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/doc/p1205445419/v108284/2015.04.0-SPPReleaseNotes.pdf

The contents list is here:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/doc/p1205445419/v108284/2015.04.0SPPContentsReport.pdf

HP ESXi image for vSphere 6.0 available here:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=OEM-ESXI60GA-HP&productId=491

Happy patching…

 

Categories: Flex-10, HP Tags: , ,

CommVault: We’re not just a backup company but we don’t like telling you

April 8th, 2015 3 comments

I was very fortunate to attend Virtualisation Field Day earlier this year. One of the companies presenting was CommVault who bill themselves as a “data” company.

They spent the majority of their time at Virtualisation Field Day going through all the details of how they can do backups and restores and to be honest it was rather dull. Backups are hugely critical to your infrastructure and just like insurance you don’t want to find out you are not protected when it is too late. The thing though is backup nowadays is such a utility service. It would be unfair to say that backups haven’t evolved because they have particularly with virtualisation but ultimately you are still taking a copy of your data and storing it remotely from your live data. The what hasn’t changed much even if the how has.

This makes talking about backup a difficult task because your audience always certainly knows what backup does and generally how it works even if your tool may have a few differences. Being able to back something up and restore it is a given, being able to mount backups of VMs and restore files within those backed up VMs is now a given as well however your backup vendor choses to do it.

I feel CommVault did itself a disservice at Virtualisation Field Day which is evident by the lack of post game talk and analysis about their solution compared to some of the other presentations, proof that backups are not sexy.

However I feel that CommVault has an interesting story to tell if they could just elevate themselves from the backup bandwagon.

CommVault Simpana’s USP is not in the backup but in the use and analysis of the data that has been ingested. I use ingested deliberately to make the distinction between it just being a backup used to recover something some time in the future. Companies are being asked to do more and more with their data, some of it is in live databases or files but a huge amount is actually archive data, old log files, old emails, old text messages, old voicemails, old x-rays, old files. Companies are often required legally to keep this old stuff around for a long time and you know how this is stored, in a completely separate copy from backups. Emails are journalled by product x. text messages by product y, voicemails by product z. These products may be even separate companies with completely separate data formats, there’s no way you could search across them.

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